Apologies.

Some of you may have noticed that I haven't been all that chatty recently - on here, on Twitter, Facebook or Folksy. Unfortunately my depression has reared its ugly head again and so I have been quite withdrawn. It's a battle I've been fighting since my teens but it became worse when I had my breakdown a couple of years ago. I think my office job, although it's only 2 days a week, makes it worse as I really don't like being there. Unfortunately my dyeing does not make enough money to cover my part of the bills yet so I have to struggle on unless I'm made redundant. My doctor has upped my anti-depressants and I'm feeling a little better now so hopefully I'll be more sociable over the coming weeks. I must be feeling better as I've finally got round to having my hair done!






















One of the positives that has come out of the last few weeks is that I've been experimenting with some new dyeing techniques and base yarns. The first of these is my Merino Tweed Sock. It is made up of two strands of ordinary merino yarn plied with one superwash strand. The superwash strand takes dyes more intensely resulting in a yarn that knits up with a tweedy effect. This does actually feel a little bit like cheating - like the magic painting books we had as kids where the colours magically appeared as the wet brush passed over them. I've decided to do some of this yarn as self-striping - this takes a lot more time and work than normal dyeing as the skeins have to be wound off and then re-wound for dyeing in different colours. It's easy to get things in a tangle, so it can't be rushed. For this reason the self-striping will be more expensive than the variegated version. Here is a photo of the first few rows of a sock in Watermelon self-stripe...






















Coming soon I will have Merino/Tencel Sock and Lace, Bluefaced Leicester/Silk Sock and Sparkle Sock in both gold and silver versions. All of these would make lovely shawls or wraps for cool summer evenings.

Before I go just a quick reminder - I currently have a sale on in my Zibbet shop - 15% off everything!!!